Eligible Countries: UK or Eastern African countries.
About the Award:
The BIEA invites applications for funding for original research projects in any discipline in the humanities and social sciences in eastern Africa. Projects that fall outside of these disciplinary areas are not considered (for example, we do not fund projects in STEM subjects). However, projects in Africa beyond eastern Africa may be considered. We define eastern Africa as stretching from Sudan down to Mozambique, and Zambia across to Madagascar. We particularly welcome applications from researchers or research teams who have limited access to other sources of funds, and which engage with one or more of the following thematic areas. Priority is given to researchers based in the UK or eastern Africa.
The British Institute in Eastern Africa invites applications for funding for research projects that engage with one or more of the following thematic areas:
Epidemics, pandemics and epizootics
Citizens and science
Knowing environments
Technologies of politics
Urban lives
Retelling the past
Type: Grants
Eligibility:
BIEA research funding is available to support original research within these thematic areas in any discipline in the humanities and social sciences across the region.
The BIEA’s thematic grant scheme particularly seeks to help researchers who have limited access to other sources of funds. In doing so, the BIEA seeks to nurture early career researchers and scholars in eastern Africa, and is keen to fund small projects that lay the ground for larger projects. Such researchers may include postgraduate students in eastern African or the UK, or people who have not followed conventional research careers but whose local knowledge or contacts make them well-fitted to conduct quality research.
This funding supports original research in the humanities and social sciences, and we particularly encourage applications from the wider eastern African region, which we define as stretching from Sudan, to Mozambique, and including Madagascar. ‘
Priority is given to researchers based in the UK or eastern Africa.
Number of Awards: Limited
Value of Award: Grants are normally between £500 and £1,000; in exceptional circumstances, up to £1,500 may be awarded. The grant should contribute towards actual research costs and not include institutional overheads, equipment, and applicant’s stipend or publication costs.
How to Apply:
The application form with details of supporting documents required can be downloaded here.
The form and all supporting documents (including two references) must be submitted by email togrants@biea.ac.ukbyFriday 14 May 2021
Successful applicants will be notified one month after the closing date. If you have not heard from us by then, please consider your application not successful this time.
Madagascar is in great pain. Theodore Mbainaissem, the head of the World Food Programme (WFP) sub-office in Ambovombe, southern Madagascar, says: “Seeing the physical condition of people extremely affected by hunger who can no longer stand…children who are completely emaciated, the elderly who are skin and bone…these images are unbearable… People are eating white clay with tamarind juice, cactus leaves, wild roots just to calm their hunger.”
One third of people in southern Madagascar will struggle to feed themselves over the next few months. Until the next harvest in April 2021, 1.35 million people will be “food insecure” – almost double those in need last year – and 282,000 of them are considered “emergency” cases. Pervasive food insecurity in Madagascar is the result of a variety of factors.
Poverty
Food security is not only caused by a lack of food supply but also by the lack of political and economic power to access food. Thus, access to income is one potential means for alleviating food insecurity. In Madagascar, the majority of the people don’t have proper access to income.
Madagascar is one of poorest countries in the world. In the 2007/2008 United Nation Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Index, an indicator that measures achievements in terms of life expectancy, educational attainment and adjusted real income, Madagascar was given the rank of 143rd out of 177 countries.
Madagascar’s economy is tiny. The market capitalization of U.S. tech giant Facebook is more than 40 times Madagascar’s national income. The company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, alone is five times richer than the island nation. A large chunk of Madagascar’s minuscule national income is appropriated by the rich, evidenced in the declining consumption capacity of the poor. Between 2005 and 2010, consumption for the poorest households declined by 3.1%.
A COVID-19-triggered economic recession has debilitated an already impoverished people. The combined impact of global trade disruptions and pandemic restrictions is estimated to have resulted in a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contraction of 4.2% in 2020. The poverty rate (at $1.9/day) is estimated to have risen to 77.4% in 2020, up from 74.3% in 2019, corresponding to an increase of 1.38 million people in one year.
Climate Change
Between 1980 and 2010, Madagascar suffered 35 cyclones and floods, five periods of severe drought, five earthquakes and six epidemics. Madagascar’s extreme weather conditions have intensified due to climate change, increasing food vulnerability.
Food insecurity affects all regions of the nation, and particularly those in the south, which have a semi-arid climate and are particularly exposed to severe and recurrent droughts. In 2019, a lack of rainfall and a powerful El Nino phenomenon led to the loss of 90% of the harvest and pushed more than 60% of the population into food insecurity.
Interruptions in food supply due to crop failures have resulted in sharp increases in the prices of different items. Some areas have seen the price of rice shoot up from 50 U.S. cents per kilogram in 2019 to $1.05 in 2020.
Extractivism
The extractivist engine of Madagascar’s economy has usurped lands intended for food crops and displaced the people living there. Transnational mining companies in search of new resources have paid increased attention to the significant mineral potential of the country, which is rich in diverse deposits and minerals, including nickel, titanium, cobalt, ilmenite, bauxite, iron, copper, coal and uranium, as well as rare earths. Nickel-cobalt and ilmenite have attracted the majority of foreign direct investment thus far.
Beginning from the early 2000s, multinational mining companies have made the largest foreign investments in Madagascar’s history. Those affected by the large-scale mining operations are subjected to the restrictions on land and forest-use associated with the establishment of the mining and offset projects. Such resource use restrictions affect important subsistence and health-related activities, with critical impacts on livelihoods and food security.
To take an example, villagers living in Antsotso have been heavily impacted by biodiversity offsetting at Bemangidy in the Tsitongambarika Forest Complex (TGK III). They have reported that QIT-Madagascar Minerals (QMM) — a public-private partnership between Rio Tinto subsidiary QIT-Fer et Titaine and the Malagasy government — did not explain to them that they were involved in a offsetting program when they were asked to participate in tree planting and were excluded from accessing the forest.
Constrained resource access due to the biodiversity offsetting measures has seriously impacted food security among Antsotso’s residents, forcing them to abandon rich fields near forest areas and instead grow manioc in inferior sandy soil next to the sea at great distance from their village. All this is the result of the concentrated clout possessed by mining magnates.
Agro-export Firms
Between 2005 and 2008, 3 million hectares were under negotiation by 52 foreign companies seeking to invest in agriculture. These companies form a landscape made up of irregularly placed and privately secured territorial enclaves that are linked to transnational networks but disarticulated from both local populations and national development projects. Since these companies are functionally integrated in a framework geared toward the enrichment of foreign investors, they have little regard for the food security of Madagascans.
In March 2009, the South Korean company Daewoo Logistics signed a 99-year lease in Madagascar for about 1.3 million hectares, or about half of the island’s arable land. It was the largest lease of this type in history and would have supplied half of South Korea’s grain imports. The organization Collective for the Defense of Malagasy Lands (TANY) was established in response to the lease and petitioned the government to first consult with stakeholders before agreeing to foreign land deals. The petition was ignored.
The deal subsequently fell through when political unrest broke out in Madagascar, which led to the fall of the former president, Marc Ravalomana. Daewoo may have been the largest and most-publicized of foreign investment in recent history, but it was not the first. The proposed land deal raised international attention to the land grabs taking place across the globe, particularly given the contemporaneous food crisis.
Monopoly Capitalism
Hunger in Madagascar is the outcome of a confluence of crises. All of them are fundamentally related to capitalism — the system that generates the chaotic drive for ever-greater profits. In the monopoly stage of capitalism, the oppressed people are standing up against a system of generalized monopolies — a structure of power where a tiny clique of plutocrats and their tightly integrated productive apparatuses control the world.
Correspondingly, the Third World has seen its autonomy erode in the face of this neo-colonial onslaught, leading to the dominance of comprador bourgeoisie — a fraction of capitalists whose interests are entirely subordinated to those of foreign capital, and which functions as a direct intermediary for the implantation and reproduction of foreign capital. What we need today is an independent and unified initiative from the Third World, which brings oppressed countries like Madagascar into regional alliances aimed at de-linking from imperialist architectures and pursuing a socialist path.
Humanity carries an historical baggage. Religion is arguably the most important component of the burden. Defined as a set of beliefs in the super natural causation of natural phenomenon, it most likely arose when humans acquired the faculty of coherent thought and communication skills. Prior to that, at the point of divergence from their closest cousins the chimpanzees, and like them they would live in trees, subsist on berries, fruits, tubers and vegetables. They were probably mono androus, possibly mono-gamous too .as indicated by the near universal acceptance of the legend of Adam and Eve .They would congregate into small groups, moving from region to region with changing weather, but not getting too far from a source of water, a natural spring ,lake or a river .An accidental fire, destruction of local trees and vegetation would force them to eat the flesh of animals roasted in the fire and the roasted grain and greens too, leading to their first cooked meal. They probably didn’t relish the taste first, but gradually came to prefer it to raw meat as in the cooked state it would last longer. Animal meat opened a vast resource of nutrition. Mankind shed vegetarianism and gradually evolved to hunter-gatherer stage. Men would leave women and children in caves and other natural shelters, leaving a few males behind for protection and heavy work and be away foraging for food for days and weeks. Some would fall victim to predators, accidents and elements and not return. Women controlled the household, would have conjugal relations with the ones left behind and look after the returning providers as well. It was polyandrous, matriarchal society. There was, as yet, no particular need of a religion, there were no marriage bonds to sanctify, no property to be inherited by legitimate issue. If the area became too inhospitable they just picked up and left. Accidental observation of seed germinating, growing into grain, vegetables or fruit plants would lead to agriculture and long term settlement in a fertile region. Stable habitat was needed for shelter against elements. People now built houses of mud reinforced with straw, laid claim to fields to sow. Concept of property is in incipient stage now. It can be inherited, men would want to pass on the product of their seed, formal marriage became a necessity, boys stronger physically, though less in stamina than the girls, came to be preferred and got the lions share of assets, girls essential for perpetuation of race came to be valued as wonderfully endowed property. Spirit men were needed for blessing the wedding ceremony, also to ward off evils, propitiate gods for a good crop, rain as needed and to keep wild fires, hurricanes, lightening, earthquake, blizzard, hailstorm or drought in check. Socially beneficial deeds, helping others, honesty, hard work, truth, loyalty , kindness to women, children, elders, the sick and handicapped, respect for property were deemed pious, damage to property, stealing, robbery, murder, abduction of women were branded sins to be punished by misfortune, deprivation, injury and death. Religion is coming to its own as a disciplinary force. Spirit men are getting organized into primitive priestly order to mediate with gods and grant absolution on their behalf. With a growing body of human knowledge of natural phenomenon, perhaps failure of the priests to tackle adversities, need for supernatural, mystically inspired faiths arose. Priests rise to the occasion, develop dogma, cultist traditions, myths, fantasies and group adherence which survive to the present day. First religions are composite of conclusions drawn from observation of natural phenomenon and supernatural mediated by a creator or a group of them with subsidiary divinities specializing in facilities as Health, wealth, fertility, education etc. Hinduism is the best example of a composite religion. There is a supreme deity presiding over a cabinet as it were, of lesser gods and manifesting in different forms and shapes as required. Faith, loyalty, courage, honesty, motherhood, respect for elders, piety, observance of rites is emphasized. Rigid economic/social classes are developed with Brahmin for religion, scholarship and teaching and advice to Kastriyas, the warriors, kings and protectors of the system,. Vaisha, the business class, adept at book keeping, market management and trade and the physical workers for agriculture, crafts, carpentry and smithy (Iron, Copper, Bronze) work. Natives are relegated to unclean work and eventually to untouchability. Society has a structure and religion is needed to preserve the frame work. Bhudism and Jainsism, from anthropological perspective are but sublimation of Hinduism. Pharaohs also practiced a composite religion based on a stable mix of primitive science and equally primitive mythology. They had the son god and moon god, but pharaohs could compete with them on equal terms. Genetic makeup was revered, the ruler marrying his sister and only the progeny of the union acceptable as successor to the throne. It was the last era in human history when man stood toe to toe with gods and made them blink. Hinduism did have gods revealing themselves as men and men become lesser gods, but not quite as good as pharaohs but did bequeath gender consciousness, as they had goddesses as well. Greeks, Romans and the so called pagan religions had pantheon of gods and goddesses, but gods had an edge. All these religions preach sanctity of property and protect feudal states with a king at the top of the heap. Weakness of faith generally led to breakdown of order and anarchy. It is the bulwark against disruption, internal and external ordaining preservation of order as supreme duty. Human knowledge has now developed to the extent that composite religions don’t suffice. They were perhaps ineffective against catastrophic calamities, rise of sea level drowning vast expanse of earth, enormous floods, wide spread desertification due to climatic change, passing of ice age, fall of huge meteorites causing dust storm lasting for months, led to the invention of purely divine faiths, with a Supreme Being, uncreated unique and alone (Christianity humanized him as an after thought by giving him a wife and a son He also spoke to Moses) invisible lord and master, macro and micro managing all the worldly affairs, harboring knowledge of past present and future and command over time and all happenings, creating elements, animals and plants, planets and all there is on them, water, mountains, deserts and forests. Man arrogated to himself, the status of the highest creation. God chose messengers among men to pass on knowledge of good and bad, which would please him and what would not, what would lead to eternal bliss of paradise and what would make eternal hell fire his fate. Having assigned control and perception of all past, present and future events, collective, individual, natural or volitional, the problem arose, that if He knows all, why does he permit people to do evil. An ingenious solution was evolved. God gave some volition to man, sent messenger to teach the difference between right and wrong, a body of dogma, rituals and incantations to please him. He was the supreme puppet master, who granted some independence to puppets but punished them for impermissible use of the faculty. The contradiction between absolute power and knowledge and free will of humans remained. God was given benevolent as well as ferocious and vindictive traits. He had to be a tiny bit humanized. Agnostics solved the dilemma by hypothesizing the clock make theory. Judaism is the most ancient “divine” religion. It has huge set of dogma, indoctrination, history, myth, scripture and traditions. It came to combat social, economic political evils and moral depredation of the declining pharaoic establishment. It didn’t do particularly well, in competition with Pagan beliefs. Ascetic in essence, with commandments demonizing pleasure (though Solomon has plenty of wives, but I suppose having had to marry them he had to look after them, which Pharaohs, Greeks, Persian and Romans didn’t have to) for which mankind had developed the wherewithal and taste for. It was persecuted, victimized, ridiculed and relegated to the lowest status of society. Jews became a devious, crafty, envious, miserly, avaricious characters castigated in literature- Shylock for example. (Even in early sixties, calling someone a Jew in England was an insult and in 1974, I came across a 94 year old patient in Brooklyn who told me that he was not ashamed to be a Jew). Only the guilt complex shared by the Christians the world over, for the holocaust rescued them from destitution. . As a world order, Judaism failed. It could discipline only its adherents. It did not attract a large body of converts, so putting a brave face on it, proscribed proselytisation, restricting Judaic purity to the progeny of an alliance between a Jewish mother and Jewish father. The ancients were the original feminists . Jews had been ostracized and rendered ineffective. A young rabbi castigated his brothers in faith for exclusiveness, degeneration, injustice, moral failings, gluttony, debauchery and exploitation particularly of the poor and exhorted them to mend their ways. I venture to say, he was the first socialist, though as a sop he granted kingdom of heaven to the poor. The established Judaic order, sought the aid of the forsworn enemy, the Roman governor and had Jesus crucified. His followers went underground, his teaching collected some sixty years after his death, comforting themselves with the concept that he had atoned for their sins and would redeem them at the end of time. With missionary zeal and secret service, unrivalled since, they vigorously pushed conversions. A firm conviction in after life, eternal and embellished with all one desired, gave them the fortitude to withstand all persecution and torture, the most dramatic being fed to lions. Their luck turned. Constantine saw light, snatched victory form jaws of defeat and proclaimed it the state religion.( Jews, perhaps gave up too quickly. Maybe they would found their own Constantine). Their day had come. With state machinery at the back, they went forth saving souls, with the bible in one hand and a sword in the other, exceeding in ferocity, what had been done to them before empowerment, never mind the dictum “do into other what you would like to be done to you”. They continued this martial proslytisation till nineteenth forties. Once they became part of establishment, they supported status quo, feudal system had to be supported, king had divine rights (as long as he was a Christian and paid homage to the Pope) part of which he delegated to his family and the aristocracy. King Henry the 8th thwarted in his desire to marry pretty women and often, created his own Pope( the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury who with his hierarchy remains ardent supporter of the establishment to this day). Poor were fobbed off with heavenly favor Islam is the next innovation. Born in a desert, out of the mind of a commercial traveler of impeccable antecedents, unimpeachable integrity and unmatched intellect, it too emphasized sanctity of private property , and also honesty, truth, brotherhood and unity of Ummah ( roughly nation of Islam ).It prescribed humane treatment of slaves but did not abolish the practice, and what apologists of Islam try to push under the rug, permitted carnal relations with female slaves, with out formalities of religious vows .It proscribed live burial of female infants, and Muslims make much of this prohibition, though it was a rare occurrence by all accounts, proclaimed paradise under the feet of the mother, but allowed multiple wives, the Prophet is believed to have said that if Sajda ( the act of prostration ) was allowed before a Non-Allah ( other than God ) it would be to the husband for the wife, allowed half as much the inheritance to a girl as to her brother and half a vote as a witness, deeming her emotionally unstable .Women could seek divorce but not give it, taking away the facility permissible under tribal customs. They didn’t trust the women. On the day of judgment, people will be called by their mother’s name ( daughter/son of Ms so and so and not Mr. so and so.) Non Arab converts to Islam were not given parity with Arabs, for centuries they had to have an Arab patron, this practice persists to this day, all South-Asian workers require a Mavali ( Sponsor, in Mumbai the term is used for hooligans ) This is reminiscent of Indians converts to Christianity who were not quite Sahib Log. Various doctrines, rules and laws attempted to discipline the unruly Arabs given to blood feuds, a much more profitable alternative- expeditions under written by the state, the holy wars- Jihads was provided. So far we have seen that religion, primitive and advanced, served the purpose of upholding the established order, pre existing or ordained by it. It legitimized law and order agencies and administration of the state. There was no other means of protecting life and property . With renaissance, freedom of thought and expression, social and economic theories, idea of human rights, harnessing of the power of steam, industrial revolution, advent of printing press, accessibility of knowledge to the common man, relative economic emancipation and empowerment of the poor and the dispossessed and later communist, socialist and democratic dispensations, loosening of the stranglehold of religion, tremendous increase in productivity, trade union movement, decline of feudal power, enhancement of capital at the expense of the former, making it redundant except in a few archaic societies,( Capitalism, in the first instance had been opposed by organized religion), all made religion redundant as a social force ,.Capitalism co opted the existing coercive apparatus of state, the police, army and the politicians. Religion in order to survive became the hand maiden of capitalism .Capital had the added advantage that it owned all the main stream media, so could brain wash the public .The most glaring success of the perception management being that US citizens, with 45 million among them with no health insurance, are convinced that their health system is better than the National Health care in Europe and Canada. Majority of people in the developed world, with wide spread literacy, and enhancement of social consciousness are aware of the economic basis of crime ,conflict and war , do not believe in divine infallibility and want to keep faith and state separate. It is not their fault that the majority of people in the under developed world need the crutch of religion. They have been deliberately kept ignorant, fed with unholy doctrines by agents of corporate capital and neo imperialist powers, which encourage non representative repressive regimes, prevent emergence of popular governments and if they do mange to come up, sabotage their survival. These tools of neo imperialism fritter away national resources by buying weapons of war for use against equally destitute neighbors. Today’s ( 12/9/04 ) report on BBC told us that a Billion children are dying of disease ,poverty, and hunger because their governments do not use their resources in nation building. Religion had become redundant for as a tool for preservation of social order .By all counts, former soviet union was more egalitarian , provided basic needs to all, food, shelter and vodka, there was little street crime, no mafia, hoarding, black market or starvation , than the current capitalist caricature. China with a smooth transition to a composite capitalist/socialist economic system and booming economy ,India with all its historic social and cultural baggage, has a vibrant economy and world class academies. None of the above needed religion. Pakistan created in the name of a religion is wallowing in the mire of lawlessness, obscurantism and sectarian and feudal sponsored ethnic cleansing. USA, with resurgence of messianic visions re-elected George Bush with catastrophe impending in Iraq, with soldiers scrounging for armored vehicles and a puppet installed in Afghanistan, whose writ and that of his patron the US extending only to the confines of the capital, Kabul, jobs lost by million at home ,dollar sliding in international markets and economy crawling Religion has long out lived its utility, except perhaps as a consolation in times of acute personal grief and misfortune, as Morphine is required .for extreme pain, and a sage, it was Karl Marx did compare it to the drug. Advocates of regular, habitual drug use are prosecuted in all societies.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly being touted as our future. AI technology has not only invaded our private lives in the form of smart technologies, virtual assistants, and robotic/ humanoid companions; but is also finding ever increasing representation in public sphere and government policies. From health technology to agriculture to the norms being developed on women safety (such as AI enabled cameras to track expressions in Uttar Pradesh) – the reliance of AI is predominant.
While the technology certainly has its advantages, caution needs to be exercised as the over-reliance on AI often comes at the price of exclusion of certain groups from the mainstream. Centuries’ old bias against groups such as women, people of colour find their way into AI technology and increase manifold. The bias is visible in two forms primarily. One, when the AI is the object, i.e., the AI technology is used to perform certain functions; the resulting outcome displays certain inherent predisposition against a select group. Second, when the AI acts a subject, i.e., how AI or AGI is represented and imagined – particularly in their physical manifestations through utilizing robotics technology or representation in popular culture – the depiction is often highly gendered/ racial/ casteist.
Artificial intelligence as an object: Incidents of bias in AI output
Probable job losses due to AI have become a global concern. However, most of these jobs would be those belonging to the minority sections and women. A study by the World Economic Forum states that women account for approximately 57% of the jobs that Artificial Intelligence is most likely to replace, and these women would be left with far fewer transition and reskilling opportunities vis-à-vis their male counterparts.
With the omnipresence of AI various biases also find their way into AI understanding and create a lopsided situation against certain sections of the population. These biases are in most occasions not actively fed into the AI tool, but are so deep-rooted in history that the data collated by the AI understands them as a normative framework within which it has to operate.
An oft-quoted example of AI bias is that of Amazon, which developed an AI tool (now discontinued) to help speed up the process of hiring employees. The AI would gather the employee data available at Amazon to recognize the kind of people that were usually hired by the company and found that most people working at Amazon were men. This resulted in the software automatically rejecting resumes of female applicants particularly those who have studied at all women’s colleges. While the software creators had no intent to reject female candidates; the existing data set and the age-old gender divide that was already present in the workforce manifested itself into an unfortunate outcome.
Apple’s Siri on being called a sl*t or a bi*ch would respond with ‘I’d blush with I could’. While Siri has now been programmed to refuse any response to the comment; the reply went on to become the title of a UNESCO report where the UN body pointed out that such subservient and deflective responses from AI assistants which were meant to please the user were creating an atmosphere where the idea of women as being ‘servile, obedient and unfailingly polite’ was reinforced.
Microsoft’s female chat-box Tay was tricked by users to post racist hate-speech on Twitter within twenty-four hours of launch and had to be recalled. Researches show that AI software used for facial recognition is error-prone when recognizing people of colour- particularly women of colour; at times not detecting the faces at all. These are also best suited to recognize the faces of white men.
Gender biases are also witnessed when AI is posed with word associations. Word embedding in AI happens through the already available data that the AI gathers. Our expressions, verbal and written, towards certain jobs seep into the embedding models utilized by AI – in turn making them consider some jobs more masculine and some others feminine. While words such as profession, mathematics and science are correlated to men, women get linked to family, and humanities.
A research conducted on “correctional offender management profiling for alternative sanctions” (COMPAS) – an AI-driven software utilized in some parts of USA to predict whether a person convicted for certain crime would commit a crime again concluded that even though ethnicity or race is not used as an input by COMPAS, the results are often biased against the African American population.
AI learning is not merely a passing issue, and as more information is collated by AI tools, the biases are only projected to increase. For example, in a research conducted by King’s College London, it was found that women in leadership positions received more negative comments on Twitter as compared to their male counterparts. The research also found that a Google image search for the terms ‘President’ or ‘Prime Minister’ showed approximately 95% male faces. The researchers assert that based on said data AI tools shall learn that women are less liked in leadership positions and important leadership positions are held by men. They further add that this learning shall remain within the AI tool’s understanding and with our increasing dependence on AI tools shall be projected onto us, thus creating an unbalanced situation for women in public life. This signifies that unless steps are taken to curb the AI tools from learning discriminatory behavior, it shall have immensely problematic consequences.
Since AI functions on acquired learning or input from human resources, decisions reached through AI have a high probability of having a discriminatory outcome. Intent is not a requirement to constitute indirect discrimination through AI. There are multiple causes for indirect discrimination in/ through artificial intelligence. First, people in the IT/ STEM fields are predominantly white men. World Economic Forum’s (WEF) global gender gap report states that 78% of AI professionals are male. This magnifies the chances of indirect bias being fed into the final product. Second, discrimination in AI occurs mostly through stereotyping – in particular the gendered stereotype. Gender stereotyping is presenting a generalized preconception about features possessed or the roles designated to men and women. Gender stereotyping begins with a generalized view or preconceptions, which take the form of assumptions about the characteristics, attributes, role leading to inferences about men and women. These stereotypes are based on physical, biological, emotional and cognitive attributes; sexual characteristics/ behavior; societal roles understood in common parlance based on gendered traits. Stereotypes predominant in the societal understanding such as those based on gender or race; inadvertently find their way into AI tools.
The problem of stereotyping can be extended to caste-based discrimination in India. Considering the Amazon example where the AI tool ignored taking into account women applicants for open positions, it is probable that a similar tool when used in India could have ignored people from certain castes. State of working India study conducted by the Azim Premji University in 2018 pointed out that while persons from Scheduled tribes and Scheduled Castes were predominantly employed in low paying jobs, their numbers in high paying occupations (except public administration) has remained fairly low. The study further states that on an average a person from the scheduled caste earns only 56% of what a person from the caste population earns; while the figure is 55% for scheduled tribes and 72% for other backward classes. Taking the figures into account an AI tool designed for shortlisting for jobs could ignore these groups, since according to the data it shall have collated, their previous representation shall have remained low. Further, an AI tool designed to assess pay-scale could place this section in a lower pay-slab vis-à-vis their caste counterparts. Even in cases where attention is paid to not mentioning the caste of a person anywhere in the applications, the AI could possibly make assumptions based on surnames. Another example that can be cited here is that of Shadi.com, a matrimonial website, which according to a report by the Sunday Times, did not offer people belonging to the scheduled castes as a potential life-partner for profiles set up for members of the Brahmin community, unless they expanded their preference to incorporate all castes.
Artificial intelligence as a subject: Analyzing representational bias
Since AI technology is still in its infancy, not much real-life data is available where AI functions as a subject. However, AI-based humanoids and AI representation in popular culture could provide certain insights into how our understanding of gender and colour percolates into AI representation. Female humanoid robots like Sophia by Hanson Robotics and Eliza by Hiroshi Ishiguro are aesthetically appealing and are often objectified. They reinforce the conventional female archetype through their design, structure, and mannerisms.
Female stereotypes manifest themselves in AI understanding in various forms. First, the role of female AI is centered on performing household chores and home-making activities. Vici from Small Wonder, Karishma from Karishma ka Karishma (Karishma’s Magic), Irona from Richie Rich are female humanoids who despite possessing advanced technologies, are primarily used to help the home-maker with household chores.
Second, the female AI is depicted as performing the societal archetype of feminine jobs – jobs that require nurturing capacity, companionship, or meticulousness without much application-based understanding. Samantha from Her is a female virtual assistant who assists the protagonist in navigating through his work, cope with his divorce and provides companionship; Nila from 2.0 is a female humanoid created to be a helper, caretaker and an assistant (to avoid confusion, Nila is an acronym for ‘nice, intelligent, lovely assistant’). J.A.R.V.I.S., from the Marvel cinematic universe, is one of the rare representations of a male AI assistant.
Third, the depictions of female cyborgs have more often than not been that of a seductive or destructive entity or both. Works like Ex Machina,Westworld and I am Mother are trying to break this mould by giving us female cyborgs that are intelligent and a change from the abused objects or villainous bodies who die in the end to more likeable beings who survive. However, none are free from the criticism which most other depictions of female humanoids garner, namely robots as objects of physical attraction or adopting a more nurturing and feminine role in the end.
Fourth, even where creators attempt to break the stereotypical moulds, gender stereotypes manifest themselves through body-language and reactions. An example is available in the form of Doraemon, a male robot cat and his sister Dorami- from the Japanese manga and anime series Doraemon. While the series tries to demonstrate gender-versatility, Doraemon is messy, has blue skin and Dorami has long eyelashes, wears a bow on her head, and is organized and meticulous.
Fifth, gender identity is not necessarily portrayed in the popular imagination through the apparent physical construct. Considering the film WALL-E, which traces the journey of two robots WALL-E and EVA, the physical construct of both the robots does not have a gender assigned to it. However, the film anthropomorphizes them through gender stereotypes to assign Wall-E, a male construct, and Eva, a female construct. This is done by utilizing various tools such as different physical appearance- with a more rugged appearance for Wall-E as compared to Eve’s petite aesthetics; mannerism – Wall-E having a more childlike quality to him while Eve is more mature and motherly; through voice portrayal; and job assignment- with Eve although holding a superior job and being better qualified theoretically, requires Wall-E to be her savior throughout the film.
Conclusion
It can be ascertained that artificial intelligence, knowingly or unknowingly, becomes susceptible to bias, most prominently in the context of marginalized groups. While sectional examples of inherent bias in AI have been discussed, the presence or absence of these parameters could have different impacts on the outcome achieved by AI. For example, a woman of colour coming from marginalized section could face more issues when compared to a white woman. Thus, when designing AI, it is important to consider the wide-ranging impact it would have on societal perceptions.
First, to minimize the concerns that AI poses, certain mechanisms such as increasing the diversity in STEM fields can be used. Lived experiences are required to reduce bias in AI. Second, AI algorithms could be commanded to recognize and learn feminist language and critical race language. Third, intensified efforts are recommended to develop legal directives that may help bridging the legal lacunae in AI governance.
In February 2021, Germany’s main business daily, The Handelsblatt, reported that Germany’s grand coalition, consisting for the social-democratic SPD and Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU –reached an agreement on the introduction of a new Supply Chain Law, which in German goes by the unpronounceable word Lieferkettengesetz.
The new supply chain act is intended to hold companies liable for human rights, labour standards, minimum wages, and environmental protections that purchase goods and finished products from abroad. This applies to all stages of their supply chain. The goal of the law is to eliminate or minimize harm done to the environment, violate working conditions and abuse human rights.
For years, if not for decades, German companies and corporations have violated basic human rights and damaged the environment when operating global value chains. Until now, companies could not be sued for the damages they create. In global trade, many questionable production practices have been outsourced to low-wage countries with little or no respect for human rights. Such companies and corporations were difficult to control when operating a long distance away.
For many years, too, there have been specific criticisms of excessive workloads, lax or non-existent occupational health and safety regulations, long working hours, exploitation, child labour, lack of compliance with local environmental standards—the list is almost endless. Many of these problems have fallen to the legal responsibility of enterprises in the Global South where local authorities mis-(or non-) supervise these regulations.
Even today, it remains difficult to sue corporations in industrialized countries for crimes committed elsewhere. The only weapon available to hold such corporations to account has been to boycott foreign suppliers who allow inhuman working conditions to flourish. This has rarely been effective in doing more than having foreign enterprises make superficial changes or close down and move elsewhere.
In recent months the Coronavirus pandemic has dramatically worsened the situation at overseas textile production facilities, for example, in Africa or Southeast Asia. Most of which are located in so-called developing countries (what rare better denominated deliberately un-developed). After the temporary lockdown in the Western industrial nations, orders were initially cancelled, leading to an immediate loss of wages at 98% of production sites. Later, some factories re-opened, often in complete disregard of local hygiene rules.
To alleviate this problem, Germany’s federal government committed itself in its Coalition Agreement of 2018 to introduce a supply chain law. After delaying the supply chain law for three years, Merkel’s government is now finally edging closer to turn the promise into reality.
Over the last few years, Germany’s government has been monitoring the extent to which companies that operate inside Germany with more than 500 employees comply with the duty of care and protect workers in their supply chain. A report on this was presented in October 2020. The report showed three things:
Just 13% to 17% of the surveyed companies fulfilled their voluntary human rights, environmental, and decent working conditions requirements;
Another 10% to 12% of companies simply announced they were on track to meet these requirements but did nothing;
At least 50% of companies and corporations missed their target.
Faced with such devastating figures, the neoliberal illusion of self-regulation evaporated into thin air, and Germany’s government saw itself forced into a position where it had to act on its 2018 promise. After all this scurrying about, the final text of the law has still not been published. The federal government admits that, because of “internal considerations”, no draft for the supply chain law has been presented. Does this mean anything or is it all window-dressing?
Despite all these glitches, Germany’s chancellery now wants to close the issue. The government sees a need for action because so far only around one in five companies have complied with its human rights due diligence obligations. This is nothing less than an abysmal showing, given the widespread ideology of business ethics and corporate social responsibility.
Most recently, the supply chain bill was blocked by Merkel’s pro-business Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier, even though Germany’s Development Minister and its Labour Minister pressed for an agreement on the supply chain law.
Despite this, there were movements in the legislative process. On 12 February 2021, for instance, all three ministers agreed on a compromise to act on the supply chain act. However, the law has yet to be approved by Merkel’s cabinet and eventually it will have to pass the parliament – the Bundestag. In order to give companies and corporations a sweet run, the supply chain law will come into effect only in 2023.
In other words, companies and corporations have been given another two years of inaction on humane working conditions, decent wages, and the environmental vandalism they often cause. Another spanner in the works: initially the law applies to companies with more than 3,000 employees and only from 2024 will it apply to companies with more than 1,000 employees. The bigger the business the bigger the win, as they have more time and more money to implement the measures of the law, and, of course, to work out means for getting around it.
Disapproval of the supply chain act came above all from corporate entrepreneurs and business lobbyists. As always, they fear negative consequences for the economy – the mythical end of capitalism as we know it. As Frederic Jameson once said, It has become easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Painting an utterly apocalyptic picture, corporate lobbyists warn against uncontrollable legal consequences and complaining that Nanny State (another character in their allegorical drama) is trying to impose unnecessary controls on companies and corporations.
Germany’s powerful corporate lobbying organisation, the Federal Association of German Employers’ Associations, sees a few small problems in the implementation of the law, considering it impractical. Together with other corporate lobbyists, they aim to exploit to the full the period until the law take effect. These corporate lobbyists find themselves in a rather isolated position, even among German companies and corporations.
Today, according to German pollster Infratest, 75% of Germans supported the new supply chain law. Only 22% reacted negatively to the concept. On the upswing, there are plenty of large German companies that are hopeful the new law will create an equal playing field. By December 2019, forty-two German companies had called on the federal government to introduce a legal framework to ensure fair competition. These companies and corporations begged for binding and comprehensible guidelines for all companies, so that fair supply chain management won’t become a competitive disadvantage.
Since 2019, many organisations from human rights, environmentalism, aid organisations, as well as trade unions and churches have joined forces. They set up the Supply Chain Law Initiative. After years if not decades of human rights violations and environmental destruction, Germany’s government finally brought forth (or eventually will introduce) a law covering the entire corporate value chain. The new law even provides sanctions in the case of corporations breaking the law. The Initiative groups want to monitor and ensure proper implementation of the law as it comes into effect.
There are encouraging signs from within the government. During a trip to Ethiopia, Germany’s Development Minister expressed his interest in the law. Support also came from Germany’s neoliberal and conservative Institute for World Economics. It considers the law feasible while stressing its positive impacts on environmental and working standards in the global supply chain.
With clear support for a supply chain law, more than seventy economists contradicted Germany’s business lobbyists and its conservative Minister of Economics. At the same time, the economists outlined a multitude of market and policy failures in the production of goods that had let to a considerable social and environmental cost. Yet Germany is not alone in working on such a law.
The European Union’s Justice Commissioner announced in 2020 that the EU would present a draft law on corporate due diligence in 2021. This was welcomed by MEPs and supporters of a German supply chain law. On 26 October 2020, the EU Commission launched a public consultation on sustainable corporate governance in which various economic actors and public institutions participated. Meanwhile, the European Parliament has adopted its own initiative, one which provides for strict due diligence obligations for companies.
These obligations will require companies and corporations to avoid negative impacts on human rights and the environment and to establish good corporate governance in their production and business. Like the German law, the European Parliament’s due diligence strategy also covers the entire value chain. This is intended to ensure that goods produced under forced labour can no longer enter the EU’s $15 trillion market of 450 million people. This will affect not only imports from China and other offending countries by them to adhere to human rights.
Human rights are universal. They apply to everyone, worldwide. Yet in many places these rights exist only on paper. Inside companies and corporations, the rights are often not enforced. Many companies can also easily escape national legal frameworks. Neoliberal globalization and pro-business regulation – framed as deregulation, getting rid of red tape and the demonizing Nanny State – allows this to occur on a massive scale. Germany’s and eventually the EU’s supply chain law will hopefully counteract this.
Since civil society’s most effective lever against the worst excesses of corporate exploitations is the law, legal regulation is the future. It is better than actions by civil rights organizations and trade unions. With the new law, Germany’s Office for Economic Affairs (Bafa) will be responsible for monitoring the law. It is likely that this will increase effectiveness of the law.
There are sanctions against corporate criminality, but sanctioning remains a hotly debated issue in Germany. Nevertheless they have entered into the design stage of the supply chain law. The NGO Supply Chain Law Initiative has identified two approaches to corporate liability:
The first approach is Germany’s civil code, while the other is
Administrative law used to reprimand violations of bureaucratic rules and regulations.
The key to understanding the lobbying power of corporations rests in the fact that Germany’s criminal law does not apply to corporations operating overseas when they violate human rights, labour rights and environmental standards. In short, companies and corporations that kill 1,000 women in a fire in a textile factory like that in Bangladesh in 2018, will still not be seen as corporate criminals. This is not just part of the high cost of fashion we pay. It is also a fact that corporate criminality of this scale is – even after the new law came into effect–still seen as being merely a side issue of compensation and administrative rule-breaking, not a major crime.
Today, Germany’s power, including its corporate power, is not exercised in counties where legal standards are low to non-existent and certainly not enforced. Rather, on the contrary, this laxity is the very reason why companies and corporations produce in the Global South. Depending on the legal basis of the country concerned, this free-for-all can significantly complicate civil, never mind criminal, liability. As a consequence, a legal liability regime needs to be designed in such a way that companies with business activities or headquarters in Germany may be held accountable in German courts for their crimes.
Overall, the supply chain law acts as a sort of interventionist standard check. As a result, a legal case against violating companies and corporations can be made, even though such a company does not have to do damage inside Germany. Yet purely administrative liability, on the other hand, is to be enforced by the public prosecutors’ offices in Germany. Under the new law companies would have to prove that they comply with their duty of care. In the end, Germany’s supply chain law seems to be a step into the right direction, even though corporations can continue to get away with a small fine when violating human rights, labour standards, or environmental regulations. He results remain to be seen. So don’t hold your breath.
One year after the Hanau murders, when right-wing extremist Tobias Rathjen killed nine strangers—eight men and one woman aged between 20 and 37—the background to this crime has still not been clarified.
The authorities are sticking to their version of a “confused lone perpetrator,” who also injured six others, some seriously, in the attack. Many unanswered questions point to links to right-wing terrorist networks that reach deep into the state. The murders are the result of profoundly right-wing politics.
For the bereaved, the enumeration of the names of those killed (#Saytheirnames) is more than a duty to prevent the memory of their loved ones from being cast into oblivion. It is a symbol for the active fight against right-wing terrorism. They want to ensure that Hanau is “not a transit station, but the final terminus of right-wing terrorism,” as the father of one of those killed put it.
Hanau victims, mural under the Peace Bridge in Frankfurt am Main
The victims were:
· Hamza Kenan Kurtović (20), who had just completed his training as a warehouse clerk.
· Said Nesar Hashemi (21), a Dunlop worker and trainee technician. He had the postcode of his birthplace Hanau-Kesselstadt tattooed on his arm only a few hours before the murder.
· Vili Viorel Păun (22), a courier service driver. He had watched the killer commit the first murders and followed him by car to Hanau-Kesselstadt to prevent worse but was shot dead in a car park.
· Ferhat Unvar (23) had just completed his apprenticeship examination as a heating technician but would have liked to study further. He revered Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. On his Facebook page in 2015, Unvar wrote the sentence, “We are only dead when we are forgotten.”
· Sedat Gürbüz (29), owner of the Midnight Bar on Hanau’s Heumarkt, was known for his generosity.
· Fatih Saraçoğlu (34), was killed on the street in front of the Midnight bar when he tried to raise the alarm.
· Kaloyan Velkov (33), a family man, was shot dead in the La Votre bar where he was working behind the counter.
· Mercedes Kierpacz (35), a single mother of two children, was about to get pizza for them when she was shot.
· Gökhan Gültekin (37) a bricklayer, was about to get married. His father Behçet Gültekin had terminal cancer and had to bury his son before his own death.
Shortly after the crime, the Attorney General’s Office halted all investigations. The background has still not been clarified publicly in any way to this day. “Today, one year after Hanau, we are just as far along as we were on the first day,” Ajla, Hamza Kurtović’s sister said in a detailed feature by the culture editorial team from broadcaster Deutschlandfunk. “To this day, we don’t know what really happened.” Not a single question has been answered, she says.
Unanswered questions
First, there is the question of how the murderer could kill unhindered for such a long time. He managed to visit several crime scenes one after the other. First, he entered the La Votre bar and the Midnight Bar on Heumarkt in the centre of Hanau, in the state of Hesse, where he gunned down a total of three people. He then drove to Hanau-Kesselstadt to kill six more people in the Lidl car park, in a kiosk and the Arena bar behind it. Unhindered, he returned to his parents’ house, where the police only entered at three in the morning. They found the killer and his mother shot dead.
As several eyewitnesses have said, the 110 emergency number could not be reached for a very long time. This probably cost at least Vili Viorel Păun his life. Vili had watched the first murders from his car. He drove after the killer and tried to call 110 three times, but no one answered. Then the killer stopped in front of him in Kesselstadt, got out and came back to Vili’s car, where he shot him through the windscreen.
Several other witnesses did not get through on the emergency number either. Survivors from the first crime scene tried for 20 minutes before they managed to pass on the registration number of the mass murderer’s vehicle. But even after that, Tobias Rathjen was not stopped.
Flowers at the crime scene, Heumarkt in Hanau, on February 20, 2020
Only a few days ago, the public prosecutor’s office started investigations into a locked emergency exit at the Arena bar. Time and again, relatives had pointed out that the victims’ escape route in this shisha bar had been cut off. Reportedly, due to an earlier police order, the door was locked to prevent patrons from escaping through the back door during frequent police raids.
Further, the personal details of the killer and his father raise serious questions. Tobias Rathjen, 43, had been known to the authorities as a racist, right-wing extremist and psychopath for at least 18 years. There have been four legal proceedings against him in which he was accused of various offences related to drugs and violence since 2002. Time and again, he also filed complaints with the attorney general and the Hanau Public Prosecutor’s Office, claiming that he was being spied on by a secret organisation. As a result of such a letter to the Attorney General’s Office, he was forcibly committed to a psychiatric ward in 2002.
So, he was anything but a blank slate. Despite all this, the killer held a firearms licence that permitted him to own several highly dangerous weapons and to train as a sniper. In the year before the bloody deed, Rathjen took part in several combat training exercises, including shooting exercises in Slovakia. Six months before the night of the murders in Hanau, Rathjen had openly posted a 24-page confession on the internet. In it, the “Trump supporter” fantasised about how many Germans were “pure-blooded and worthy” and had developed bizarre genocidal plans, according to which, the populations of more than two dozen states, including half of Asia and several cultures from North Africa and Israel, were to be completely annihilated.
Also, in summer 2019, the relevant authority in Gelnhausen granted the killer permission to significantly expand his hunting licence. This occurred even though only a few days before, the same authority had come under public criticism, having not refused a gun licence to the known racist who carried out the July 2019 fatal attack on the Eritrean Bilal M. in Wächtersbach.
Rathjen’s father Hans-Gerd, 73, has also played an extremely dubious role. The senior citizen, who continues to live undisturbed in Hanau-Kesselstadt, shares his son’s conspiracy fantasies and had already attracted attention as a fanatical racist. As early as March 2017, he demanded to be served only by German employees in the citizens’ centre of the city of Hanau; bringing a German shepherd dog, allegedly as “protection against foreigners.”
On the night of the deadly assault, the police briefly arrested the older Rathjen, but then released him. According to his statement, he was fast asleep and did not notice anything, but a neighbour saw him handling his son’s car in the street after the shootings.
According to a report by Der Spiegel, the killer’s father not only displayed the same paranoia as his son but also expressed the same racist sentiments. For example, he had demanded that the memorials to those killed by his son be removed, describing them as “incitement of the people,” and he had insulted Hanau Mayor Claus Kaminsky because he had said that those murdered were “no strangers.” The father also demanded the return of his son’s murder weapons and ammunition and demanded that his internet site be reactivated.
It only became known late in the day that the elder Rathjen had made a submission to the public prosecutor’s office claiming his son’s name and that of his family had been unjustly besmirched. He based this on the “specialist literature of Mr. Thilo Sarrazin,” according to which “my country has been abolished.” The letter contained a serious threat: “Restitution will require several lives.”
(Sarrazin, formerly a long-time leading member of the Social Democratic Party, SPD, and state finance minister in Berlin, is the author of the anti-Muslim screed “Germany Abolishes Itself.”)
Demonstration after the murders in Hanau, February 22, 2020
All this has been made public by the bereaved groups and their lawyers, but not by the investigating authorities. The relatives believe Rathjen senior is a “ticking time bomb” and have filed criminal charges against him. They say he most likely knew about and approved of the planned crime at an early stage, and that he may have been involved in his wife’s murder. In any case, he has since openly threatened further homicides.
All these clues together paint a picture. The Hesse state authorities allow such “ticking time bombs” to go completely unchecked. On the night of the murder, the Hanau police let the cold-blooded murders happen over a long period and only intervened very late on. And the public prosecutor’s office, state interior ministry and other authorities have been trying for a year to let the investigations fizzle out. The questions arise: What do they have to hide? What friends or sympathisers did father and son have within the state apparatus? What connections and right-wing networks are being covered up?
To date, the Hesse police have not spoken to the relatives of the victims, allegedly because “the investigation is still ongoing.” Ajla Kurtović, Hamza’s sister, said she was “stunned” that the police did not answer a single question. Her family had not been told where her brother was for a week. She would never have believed that investigations could be so slow.
In fact, after the night of the murders, the authorities gave the victims’ relatives—but not the father of the killer—an official “public endangerment warning.” Etris Hashemi, brother of the slain Said Nesar Hashemi, reported on this in the Tagesthemen news broadcast last Thursday.
Etris himself had survived a bullet to the neck but was left with serious injuries. He had received a “public endangerment warning” when he was able to leave the hospital. He was told not to take revenge, not to commit a crime—“that I should lie low,” as Etris said. “I took that as an insult at the time. For me, it goes without saying that I would not commit a crime in this country. And then after months, almost a year, we get to hear that the father is making such racist comments!”
The political issues
The Hanau murders did not come out of the blue. As Hanau Mayor Claus Kaminsky (SPD) admitted on the anniversary: “I think the state has a great debt to pay here. But so far, clearly more is coming to light through the families than through the state itself.”
It is intolerable hypocrisy that last Friday evening, Federal President Frank Walter Steinmeier (SPD) called for a “common fight against racism.” “Don’t let the evil deed divide us!” the president called out to those present at the commemoration ceremony in Hanau.
However, he did not name the real people responsible: the politicians of the federal and state governments. After all, it was none other than Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (Christian Social Union, CSU) who coined the catchphrase about immigration being the “mother of all problems.” It was also he who announced at an Ash Wednesday political gathering that the government would fight “to the last bullet” against allowing “immigration into the German social welfare systems.”
Brutal deportations are regularly carried out not only by the grand coalition of the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and SPD in Berlin, but also by the Hesse state government, in which the Greens sit alongside the CDU and the Left Party-governed Thuringia. Most recently, the coronavirus pandemic has shown that all parties are implementing the policies of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Nevertheless, the killing of the Hanau Nine had a special dimension: it was an open attack on the working class. Hanau-Kesselstadt is mainly home to working class families who originally came from Italy, Turkey, Bosnia and Romania and, later, from Syria and Afghanistan, and whose children were born and grew up here.
Their parents worked in construction or at Dunlop, Heräus technology group, electrical engineering company BBC and other Hanau industrial firms, many of which have since closed. The younger ones work in Frankfurt am Main, at the airport, in the Opel auto factories or the supply industry. In Hanau-Kesselstadt, everyone knows each other and feels they belong. It was against this international, proletarian neighbourhood that the fatal shootings were directed.
Here is also the key to understanding the unanswered questions. At the latest since 2014, with the turn to German militarism and an aggressive foreign and security policy, official politics have become less and less compatible with the needs of working people. The very existence of an alert and potentially rebellious working class poses a constant threat to the ruling politicians.
The World Socialist Web Site and the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) strongly oppose the fascist drive. The SGP demands the dissolution of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, as the German secret service is called, an immediate halt to deportations and the closure of all deportation camps and for equal democratic and social rights for everyone living here.
In its election statement, the SGP writes: “Mass death, social inequality and war are incompatible with democracy. This is why the ruling elite around the world is turning to authoritarian forms of rule. ... The threat from the right is particularly acute in Germany. The police, army and intelligence agencies are infested with right-wing extremist terrorist networks that enjoy support from the highest levels of the state. Despite the deadly terrorist attacks in Halle, Hanau and other places, and the murder of Kassel District President Walter Lübcke, the leaders and backers of these fascist structures remain free men. ... The AfD was systematically built up by the political establishment and media.”
